Many words, strung together

3 AM
August 21, 2006

I received an unusual email today, and it’s given me an idea. The piece of email in question was, aside from a meaningless subject line, blank. Probably a programming or configuration error on behalf of the spammer, or maybe it was a virus that was quietly stripped by a vigilante MTA. Despite it’s suspect nature, the email had made it through both SpamAssassin’s and GMail’s filters.

That suggests a minor, but pleasant, misuse of email. First, you have to determine whether the recipient’s email reader sorts messages from earliest to latest or latest to earliest. Let’s say I’m sending to my wife – her reader (GMail) has the most recent message at the top.

Next, I open my mail client and send her four emails in quick succession:

-Alan

you.

love

I

The when my wife next checks here email, she’ll see a lovely message, without even having to click on it. I’m calling it, “Zero-click messaging”, and I’m posting it here before anyone patents it. Be free, idea. (Of course, if you invented it first, let me know, so I can give appropriate credit.)